The techno-economic potentials of agrivoltaic installations in Austria

Austria’s goal of reaching netzero emissions by 2040 requires an up to tenfold expansion of solar photovoltaics. Besides roof-top installations, the development of ground mounted photovoltaics will be required, possibly creating conflicts with agricultural production. Here, we assess how the deployment of agrivoltaic installations can reduce the land-use competition between agriculture and electricity generation in Austria — and under which conditions such systems are profitable. For that purpose, we simulate electricity generation of agrivoltaic installations, and the reduction in agricultural output due to shading under past and future climate. Profits from electricity generation are significantly higher than those from agriculture, therefore making agrivoltaic schemes less profitable than stand-alone solar PV systems, even under the current regulatory scheme which grants higher subsidies to agrivoltaic systems. For attaining 90TWhy−1 of electricity generation from solar PV on cropland, an upper bound in all climate neutrality scenarios, an amount of 5%–16% of total crop area is required. The required areas and the simulated reduction in the yield imply that the loss in Austrian crop production would reach 2%–6%. Only agrivoltaic systems are capable of achieving production losses at the lower end of the observed range. Climate change adaptation effects of agrivoltaic systems are minor.